Papaya
by randomcat23
Summary: A short take on Van's love of the pink fruit and the significance it holds in his life.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Zoids.

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Not quite sure where this idea came from.

I suppose it takes place after Guardian Force.

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Van Flyheight was five years old when he had his first taste of papaya.

He had been racing around his dusty backyard, playing much more attention to the images in his imagination than to the rocks on the ground. One false step and one of those rocks caught Van's small foot, tripping the young boy and sending him to the ground.

The sandy dirt scraped up Van's left knee, breaking the skin and causing tears to well up in his eyes. He glanced at for a second and then let the tears flow.

It was not even a moment later that his father found him in this state. Calmly, Dan Flyheight picked up his son and carried him back to the house carefully and silently. After cleaning and bandaging the whimpering boy's wound, Dan smiled lightly and asked, "How about a piece of papaya, Van?"

Confused, but unwilling to turn away an offer, Van just nodded and wiped his tears from his cheeks. He watched his father straighten up and enter the kitchen only to return soon with a small bowl filled with pink fruit.

"Here you go," Dan said and handed his son a fork and the bowl. "See if you like it."

Van sniffed and hesitantly took a bite of the foreign fruit. In between chews, he nodded, surprised; it was sweet and juicy. It wasn't long before the young boy had gulped down the whole bowl and was asking for more.

Dan just laughed, ruffled Van's hair and said, "It's rather sweet, isn't it?" Van nodded and his father concluded, "See, not all is wrong in the world." The child's tears then dried up and a smile replaced the whimpering.

From that day on, a bowl of papaya became a way of healing physical or emotional injuries. Dan Flyheight had never been a "kiss and make it better" type of father. However, he still displayed his compassion in smaller, less obvious ways; papaya was just his favorite one.

As Van and Maria grew up, having soldier for a father gave them some hard times. During the many nights their father was called away on duty, Maria was forced to take charge of her younger brother, growing up faster than others her age. Van grew to idolize his father, but began to see Maria as more of a parent than a sister. Fear was a constant companion of both children; what if their father never came back?

To dull these hard thoughts, Maria and Van would cut up a papaya and share it even at the most obscure hours of the night when nightmares ran supreme and thunder ruled the sky. Together they would sit around the kitchen table, light a candle and laugh over how Van could never keep the juice from dripping down his chin.

Years passed and with it washed away the innocence of childhood. The news of war was hard to escape from; it was all over the news papers and the faces of the adults in the town. Dan Flyheight was away from home more often than not. Van consistently ran out to purchase papayas just in case that night the pain grew to be too much to brush away.

Some days he and Maria would just eat one of the pink fruits because they tasted sweet; other days, the fruit turned into a therapy session. This process repeated as they grew up. Sometimes it was shared with their father, but it was mostly shared alone.

This was their pattern until the news of their father's death reached their ears.

Van locked himself in his room and Maria followed suit, unsure of how to tackle the dark feeling that consumed her heart. For days they walked in a daze, doing only what was needed to survive; there was little talking done. They wouldn't meet each other's eyes in fear of making the other cry.

They really were alone then.

The night after the funeral, after all the distant relatives and friends had paid their respects and left, the siblings sunk into their couch, a bittersweet feeling filling them both. The sun had dipped low in the sky before either of them moved. In the dim light, suddenly, Van slid off the couch and scurried into the kitchen, his eyes gleaming but still red from crying.

Just moments later, as his father had done years ago, Van returned with two bowls of papaya and two forks clenched in his hands. Maria stared at her brother, blinking slowly. When he finally shoved the bowl into her hands, Maria took it gingerly and patted the seat next to her. Van plopped down with his own pink fruit.

The two ate in silence for a few minutes; the only sound was the soft _tink_ of the fork against the bowl as it scraped out the fruit. But soon the silence was broken by Maria's shaking sobs and Van soon joined her. They cried together over their father and the memories they had of him. But they also began laughing, relieved that they had each other—and papaya—to get them through the rough times.

Looking back on all those times he had eaten the papaya, Van was astonished that he hadn't come to associate the fruit with pain and sadness. If anything, he liked the fruit so much because it reminded him of his family, setting aside the tangy taste. As he got older he ate it even more often, maybe trying to cling onto the fading memories of his father.

Whatever the reason, when Van thought of papaya, he thought of healing, not pain. However, Van was glad that he didn't have a bad reason to eat papaya now; these days he just ate it because it tasted sweet.

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Ah, the famous papaya. I don't know really, maybe there is a deeper reason to Van's obsession with the things.

Reviews are nice.-randomcat23


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